The Coming of the Greeksmon from Therapne, on the left bank of the Eurotas and a few
miles downstream from the later site of Sparta. As already
mentioned, a cylinder seal from the Vaphio tomb portrays a
chariot carrying a driver and a fighter. 66
On the western coast of the Peloponnese, three tholos tombs
were excavated by Spyridon Marinates at a tiny place called
Peristeria (near Kyparissia, about twenty kilometers north of
Pylos). The pottery from these tholoi dated from the first half
of the sixteenth century B.C. and was of "that same mixture of
Middle Helladic and Late Helladic which characterizes the My-
cenaean Shaft Graves." 67 In one of the tholoi, Marinatos found
grave goods that had escaped the notice of tomb robbers, and
these turned out to be extraordinary and also informative. Gold
ornaments, gold cups, and a gold diadem at Peristeria not only
have parallels at Mycenae, "but even, in some cases, are appar-
ently the products of the same school of craftsmen whose works
are preserved in the Shaft Graves." 68 A tholos found at Kory-
phasion, near Pylos, also seems to date from the very beginning
of the Late Helladic 1 period. 69 Remains from the LH I and II
periods have also been found at Kakovatos, a further thirty ki-
lometers to the north. All of these Messenian sites are on the
sea, and in small sea plains.
Altogether, it appears that the Messenian coast was espe-
cially affected by a sixteenth-century takeover. Sinclair Hood,
writing before the Peristeria material was published, postu-
lated a surge of Minoan influence: "in Messenia, the southwest
tip of the Peloponnese, Cretan influence seems to have been
strong from the very beginning of the Late Bronze Age c. 1600
B.C. Tholos tombs are more numerous, and appear to have
been built there earlier than in any other part of the Greek
- Crouwel, Chariots, 123 (with plate n).
- Stubbings, CAH II, i: 641.
- Hooker, Mycenaean Greece, 56. Hooker sets out the parallels be-
tween the Peristeria offerings and those of the shaft graves in his Table 3
(233-34). - Stubbings,CAH II, i: 641.